Went on a search today and i found some large chunks of old canopy plexiglass (No frame though. D#@$!). Since there is a known F86E site about .7 miles to the north, pretty confident it came from that.

Now the mystery: I found one piece that had a grid pattern of very small plastic lines, but they were 3 dimensional and external to the plexiglass - Not painted on or vinyl or anything like that. I was really confused until i took a closer look and saw a small metal electrical connector with a wire leading into the the striping - Then i got it: Its a de-icer, like on the back windshield of many cars.

Pretty confident thats what it is, but as i have never seen this before on any aircraft, can anyone confirm thats what this is?

Something else to think about would be an antenna of some sort. I remember wires enclosed in a ridge of plastic on the inside of the canopies on the F-100's my company had. They were kind of a pain to clean around. The -1 tech manual I have identifies them as ADF or localizer antennas depending on which block number aircraft they were. I don't believe the systems were active on ours.

I tend to go with the antenna theory. I looked in the -2 maintenance manual for the F-86F, which shows that the windshield and canopy were defrosted/anti-iced with bleed air. It also shows a sense antenna that was built into the canopy. I've attached the relevant pages.

Of the three aircraft with canopies that I have experience with the (F-4,F-100,T-38) the F-100 was the only with an antenna in the canopy, I wonder if its a North American thing? It was a sense antenna for the ADF system, all three used bleed air for defrost/ anti-ice. With that being said I worked on the C-130 a little and some of the windows on the flight deck had heating elements in the glass.

I was almost certain it was a defroster when i found it, but decided to post it anyway. Now i am glad i did. Never even thought about it being an antenna, but once phixer mentioned it it seemed so obvious.

Thanks to all of you who contributed to help me solve this little mystery.

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